How to check a business website on launch day

Launch day is a public-site check, even if the preview has already been accepted. Use the actual domain and verify the customer journey before sharing the address widely.

Check the address and pages

Open the main HTTPS hostname, a service page and the contact page. Test the secondary hostname with an inner path. Confirm the final address and that essential images and styles load. Ask the developer to verify missing-page status and any important old-address redirects.

Review the public content

Check the business name, service scope, price currency and contact details. Look for temporary labels, unfinished copy and incorrect downloads. Read the policies against the features actually enabled. A page describing analytics that is not installed needs different wording from one that uses it.

Complete the enquiry check

Test the intended contact route with authorised data. For an email draft, verify the recipient and text without claiming the message has already been sent. For a submitted form, check receipt at the agreed destination. Keep a usable alternative while investigating delivery problems.

Check discovery settings

Ask the developer to verify that public pages are not accidentally left under preview indexing restrictions. Confirm canonical URLs and the sitemap point to the production hostname. Search Console can be handled separately by the owner; deployment itself is not evidence of indexing.

Confirm recovery and ownership

Keep the accepted source or export, prior deployment and setup notes. Make sure the business can access the accounts it should own. Identify who responds to an outage and who checks renewals.

Use a dated checklist with pass, fail or not checked for each item. “Not checked” is useful evidence, not something to disguise as a pass. Agree whether any remaining issue prevents launch and record the decision. After the switch, repeat checks affected by production settings; a form provider or domain change can behave differently from the preview.

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